Free In the Shadow of Lions by Ginger Garrett Page B

ribbon in her hair, even when she hadn’t eaten for days. But she was terrified. A seamstress admired her blue silk dress, mistaking her for a woman of quality, and had allowed her to sleep on the floor of her shop, but the miserable work piecing pearls on gowns could not feed two mouths, nor drive away the wet, fevered coughs that claimed so many children here.
    The child needed a baptism and a doctor. The doctor could bring medicine, but she would not have the money for this and his baptism. Purgatory was a danger more real to her than death. She had lived in purgatory; she could not sentence her son to an eternity there.
    She watched the baby breathe. His eyes were closed, the lashes dark little tendrils that nearly touched his cheeks. His fingers were impossibly small and perfect. She kissed him and held him against her breasts, rocking him as she draped her robe around them both. His flesh was so sweet and soft and new. She would not let him go even as death, a tender, shadowed nurse, came gently for him.
    “Please,” she whispered, “a little more time. I must find a priest.” She sensed Death pause for her, and though it was near, she was not afraid. She called for a neighbour, and when the woman poked her head through the thin curtain sheltering Rose from the others, Rose told her to find the priest.
    The baby’s movements grew less frequent. When the priest came, she held the baby firmly in her arms for the baptism. Then she had slept, feeling strong arms encircling them both, pressing them together so she could not separate the baby’s heart from hers. She never felt it cease, only that it joined hers and beat on and on. She had held him until their hearts and breath aligned, his growing fainter and freer. She knew the instant his soul had flown away like a little bird in winter. She did not know if she had dreamed this.
    This is why Christ hung there and never came down, she thought. He hung in agony so that those in grief could not accuse Him of less. He hung, rent open, and men were comforted by the sight. In this bitter life, who could love a God who did not suffer?
    She hoped she would never see Wolsey again, or Grimbald, or the inside of a church. She was done with men and their God.

    Rose realized Sir Thomas’s foot was tapping. These memories fled, and she faced the men as if she had forgotten it all. “Madmen?” she answered. “Yes, there were madmen. And sinners and thieves. The church welcomed them all. This is what I saw.”
    She didn’t know why she said it. Wolsey’s face, hard-set and ready to defend himself against the truth, softened into the face she had once glimpsed and dared to hope in. He smiled at her, and she knew, the way women who have given themselves do, that he desperately wanted a smile in return.
    “Sir Thomas has given you a chance for a new life,” he said to her. “May his name be praised. I pray you, make good use of it.”
    “Yes, but Rose,” More continued, his thoughts plainly too far away to see what was happening in his study. “Were there any heretics among you? Those who read Hutchins?”
    Rose held Wolsey’s gaze.
    “Yes.”
    She didn’t know why she had done that. Was she a weak woman, or a fool? Later she wanted that moment back, wanted to crush Wolsey with her words, wanted to scream her truth and hear the words out loud.
    But she knew the truth. She wanted this new life more than she wanted revenge for the old. She wanted another chance, and she feared her only way to get it was to give one to Wolsey, too. She prayed, the second surprise of the day.
    Jesus.
    It was the only word she knew, the only word not spoken in Latin in the Masses she had attended. I cannot stop sinning, she prayed . I just sinned to buy grace. I let my son die to buy him grace. I let my brothers die to find them a cure. Everywhere, grace and redemption are soiled by my hands. Help me. Help me stop.

    The next morning she sat on her bed looking out the window. It was late in